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Any good MMORPG besides WoW?

Started by Bloody Rose, November 09, 2011, 09:46:48 PM

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LunarSage

Google is no friend of mine!  :P

Seriously though... I had never heard those terms used to describe an MMO before.  Then again, I really don't read many any online articles like that. 

I think if I had to choose, I would prefer by an enormous margin a themepark game to a sandbox game.  Then again, I do love WoW.

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Jacqueline

Yes it is! Google wants to hug you!

But that's fine! I'm not very good with games or computer stuff but I think that Everquest wasn't really a sandbox MMO at all. It was still sort of a theme-park but with more freedom like the first article says. Regardless it will always be my favorite because it was my first you know.

TheGlyphstone

Everyone knows your first is always special. 8-)

LunarSage

My first was CoH, in May of 2005.  :-)

Yeah, I got into MMOs very late in the game... especially given my age.

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TheGlyphstone

My first was a crappy freemium game called Knights Online, back around 2005-2006 or so. It was nice, but profoundly unsatisfying, and left me wanting more afterwards. Then I started a committed relationship with WoW, and never strayed since (until now). Hopefully it doesn't check my internet history and realize I'm two-timing with TOR.

Shjade

My first was Everquest, but my favorite was WoW. Not only because I really enjoyed Warcraft and Warcraft 2 back in the day (WC 3 not so much), but because the gameplay was just so...smooth. Was it easier than Everquest? Yes, much. Did it hold your hand more? Yeah, and that was at times annoying. On the other hand, it was about 748 times more user-friendly and, more important, solo-friendly, which was great for me since I spend about 90% of my time in MMORPGs not in a group. It also has much less grind by comparison to EQ and, while I do enjoy grinding characters up to more powerful levels, I can appreciate being able to farm a character up to max level and work on many reputation efforts and so on all by myself in a fairly short amount of time compared to Everquest where, despite playing it for a few years, I never even broke level 60 (the cap at the time was, I think, 70, but may have been 80 by then).

It wasn't that Everquest was so much harder than WoW, it was more that the game was designed in a massively less user-friendly way: heavy punishments for death, long experience grinds required for every level (with "hell levels" later on that required even more for no apparent reason), unintuitive quest design, uninstanced raids forcing guilds to compete against each other to kill a given dragon every time it spawned (which was, I think, once a week, maybe) for epic quest items that weren't even guaranteed to drop...I could go on, but hopefully I've gotten the point across.

I still miss my bard being able to run around Norrath at the speed of light helping out anyone and everyone I saw along the way, but I don't miss the gameplay at all. I actually tried to go back to it once, after I'd been playing WoW for about a year and a half; it was impossible. It was just...so much less welcoming to the player. I know when I'm not wanted, and EQ didn't want me. :|

'Course I'm only playing LotRO now, 'cause screw monthly subscriptions. ;p
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Manari

That's the first time I've heard the term Theme Park MMORPG, but I think I get it.  That's about right, actually.  I played wow and a few of its clones for a while, and WoW was fun, but got old quick because of all the instant gratification involved.  There was no challenge and little work involved in progressing.  And at first, I liked that.  But after a few months, the ease at which anyone and everyone could gear up and level killed any and all sense of accomplishment.  I was used to an MMO like FFXI where you had to work your butt off and get tons of help to get anything done.  It was hard, it was unforgiving, but it was damn rewarding when you actually did it.

I haven't felt that in an MMORPG in years.

LunarSage

But see, many people want an MMO where it's possible to be successful soloing.  Many people don't like the idea of having to team up with anyone.  I know in WoW I rarely play with anyone but Josi.  I'm only in a guild for the bonuses.

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TheGlyphstone

Yeah, considering the online MMO-player community in general, the last thing I want is to be completely dependent on random strangers to get any sense of progression or accomplishment. Yeah, I can be in a guild, but that requires being online with guild members, so I end up stuck between the rock of very limited playtime (only periods that overlap guildies playtime) or the hard place of putting up with the antics and frustrations of unpleasant anonymous people.

Manari

I know it isn't really possible to do an MMO like that anymore.  The fact that you were forced to seek help, and everyone did, kind of made an entire community attitude that was geared towards cooperation.  I always managed to find people to help me, even if I had to wait a while before it happened.  With a game like FFXI, you couldnt play it casually.  You were forced to be hardcore.  That's all changed these days, but that's neither here nor there. 

I guess what I really loved about FFXI that I know I will never find again is the awesome and helpful people.  Friendly too.  I made so many good friends back in the day in FFXi that I actually miss not talking to anymore.  I hate the random idiots that play today's MMOs...

Ah!  I'm going off on a tangent and this is not what this thread is about, I apologize. 

kylie

     Rift had some major account data security issues lately.   In the wake of that, they have increased their password complexity requirements (and perhaps some other steps, but that's the one I recall offhand). 

     It's possible to gain regular levels solo much of the time in Rift, or in small groups for instanced dungeons (for those a little less patient like me).  It's nearly impossible to get the upper tiers of gear without raiding in 10 or 20 person groups.  Although you can often find pickup groups for those on the larger servers.

     One other thing, Rift seems to have taken an active population hit since at least November.  There are various claims about why exactly this was.  Many focus on the pure distraction of Star Wars being released, but others point out that the players online dropped earlier and stayed there through that time.  There are a few very active servers which are just hopping, and a lot of very quiet ones now.  Some say WoW is actually pretty much the same, but just fyi.       
   
     

TheGlyphstone

Wow's still chugging along with 9+ million subscribers, though it continues to hemmorage to TOR. Rift continues to hide their sub numbers, so it's hard to say.

Kazyth

I... am more and more tempted to give TOR a go, for any number of reasons.  One of the things that really piqued my interest was the way that people have described it as being character driven.  In WoW, even on an RP server, I was never really Allyn the Paladin, or what I have you.  I grouped with friends and such, and I was just K... er, Kazyth playing a game.  With all of the options and story-driven aspects of TOR, and more emerging, my geek-lust is tingling.  I want to Join The Dark Side, and actually be evil, which you can't do in most MMO's other than in a cartoony way.  Even if some of that evil is considered lopsided.  Came across this article about one of the evil things you can do, and the reactions to it, and I thought I'd share here:

http://www.shinynewkitten.blogspot.com/2012/01/dark-side-and-gamer-misogyny.html

Give it a looksee.
A rose by any other name... still has thorns you can prick someone with. - Me.


Shjade

My interest in TOR has risen from 0 to 2 out of 10 simply because of that article opening my eyes to the potential for sexy evil in the game.

I am a bad person. ;.;
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TheGlyphstone

I'm having a blast as a Sith who only chooses Light-side options, then bribing my companion to forgive me with gifts.

Ryven

Quote from: Kazyth on January 10, 2012, 10:08:56 PM
I... am more and more tempted to give TOR a go, for any number of reasons.  One of the things that really piqued my interest was the way that people have described it as being character driven.  In WoW, even on an RP server, I was never really Allyn the Paladin, or what I have you.  I grouped with friends and such, and I was just K... er, Kazyth playing a game.  With all of the options and story-driven aspects of TOR, and more emerging, my geek-lust is tingling.  I want to Join The Dark Side, and actually be evil, which you can't do in most MMO's other than in a cartoony way.  Even if some of that evil is considered lopsided.  Came across this article about one of the evil things you can do, and the reactions to it, and I thought I'd share here:

http://www.shinynewkitten.blogspot.com/2012/01/dark-side-and-gamer-misogyny.html

Give it a looksee.

It is very character driven, and the choices that you make throughout the game in conversations and dealing with npcs follows you through your career as a character.  When I finally got out of the beginner area as my imperial agent, my main quest giver (at the time) said they were impressed with my work, but that I had been soft in too many areas, (I chose all the light side options for all of my quests). 

Infinite

Guild Wars 2? I'm feeling slightly sick after having two bowls of Frosties to save glugging a 2 pint bottle of milk, so I can't physically read 4 pages of text.

Add in some home-made slow gin, anyway!

Guild Wars 2 is what I'm certainly thinking about, I'm a 7* year vet of WoW and it'll either make it or break it for me. My brother reckons the specifications for it will make it unplayable for my PC, but I'd recommend it as the first one was pretty good.

Did anyone ever try Age of Conan?
Which of these are Canadians reputedly famous of saying, eh? A) Eh?

ShadowFox89

Never tried it, but I heard it was a flop.
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Shjade

#94
Age of Conan...hhh...where to begin...

Okay, the starter area - which goes to about level 20ish, but can be exited several levels earlier than that - is the only part of the game with full voice-acted support of its quest dialogue, which creates a rude awakening when you get out of that area into the "real" game and find it suddenly silent or providing only random partial voices here and there. The gameplay is difficult, and not in a "this will challenge you" way, just in the "everything respawns almost as fast as you can kill it so you are constantly fighting things to get from one place to another anywhere you want to go until you die because you run out of stamina/mana/health from the chained battles" way. Fortunately that does get a little better once you're outside the starting area, but it's still a problem in any compact area with a lot of spawns. You end up with a lot of skills to juggle and most of them require using a combination of keys to activate, at least if you're a fighter/melee class - casters are somewhat more traditional MMO in style with point-and-cast abilities.

The combat itself is the make-or-break for most people as far as I can tell. Some people seem to really like it, others (like myself) find it tedious and overly mashy. See, there's no autoattack at all. You get several directions to attack and your opponent can defend in those directions, so you mix up your attacks to do the most damage by attacking wherever your target isn't defending, and you have to hit a key for each individual attack in addition to using your abilities (which generally require a series of basic attacks in specific directions to activate). This means you end up with both the need to remember combinations required to unlock your abilities AND you still have to find room on hotkeys for the abilities themselves, since your WhackFace ability still needs to be activated directly after you do your combo to activate it, so the full key input for WhackFace on hotkey 7 might look something like 11227 (1 2 and 3 being Left, Front and Right attack, respectively). It's supposed to make combat feel more "dynamic," but to me it just seemed annoying and a source of clutter on my hotkey bars.

Age of Conan's best qualities are its artistic ones and, of course, the tittehs, which still look reasonably good by modern standards (better than LotRO, though not by a tremendous amount), and customization options aren't bad by fantasy MMO standards, including separate wardrobe/equipment options so that you can wear whatever you want for looks without compromising your stats (including just running around naked if you feel like it). It's also free to play now, which is a plus if all you want to do is ogle character models for a while, but I can't say I'd recommend the game. The chat interface isn't exactly intuitive, the gameplay can be punishing, quest tracking is less than ideal, maps aren't especially detailed, the community is nothing special and pretty sparsely populated...I give it an overall "meh."

Edit: Keep in mind, I only played the game up to something like level 28 before I gave up on it. For all I know it suddenly becomes magical at the level cap, but I somehow doubt it.
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makizushi

Pirates of the Burning Sea

It's free, but a tad small on the population of players. Good game though. You get to be a captain of your own ship and sink other ships!!

Jacqueline

I tried that one some time ago, it was pretty fun but I found it a bit grindy and the avi combat was a little bit... poor. I ended up leaving because I was never happy with how my girl looked like, so frustrating!

RubySlippers

Okay no one mentioned it I will STAR TREK ONLINE I just started this and its free to play with micro-transactions and it was sold with Champions Online to the company that does Perfect World.

Now its wonderful the graphics crisp, you get a few free ships as you go up and the character creation pretty broad (get this I could make up my own alien species for the game with four traits you choose and so far found it very good on advancement early with player friendly controls and quests.

The only two down sides is you start and get one character and one ship for them without paying money and for paying you must have a credit card or bank sort of debit card, an issue I did mention since the parent company uses the Ultimate Game Card and on most US games you can use a major label debit gift card (mc, visa, ae).  I hope they correct that I would like more options. But if its like Champions you should have a ball for forty levels a friend plays the other game, never spent a dime and has a touch hero the mechanics here should be similar. And your limited to the Feds until you reach 25th level then can opt for the Feds or the Klingons but with the alien creator you can duplicate a fair number of races.

Oh and did I mention its free to play.  ;D

You want to also note its the big sci-fi franchise Star Trek that is longer running that Star Wars with the prestige in the game there is everything from Terran Empire raiding in the Bajoran Sector to Borg to Klingons to Orions (with the green women leadership caste) and more.

CinVerde

I've been in a number of MMOs since 2003. Star Wars Galaxies, WoW, Tabula Rasa, etc. Right now, my current games are Star Trek Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Star Trek is Free To Play as of recently,

STO has very limited amounts of Role Play, most of it is centered around Fleets (Guilds) and aboard ship. If that is what you're after, I can offer a couple of suggestions for Fleets. STO's downfall is that once you make last level, the content ends. Reroll a new toon and start over. With the recent sale from Atari to PW, the game was frozen for over a year, with very little done in the way of added content. Theres a lot of bitterness over there right now. Myself included.

TOR on the other hand is much more open and less instanced than STO is, much more free form open world RP. The game play is similar to WoW, so the learning curve is minimal, and it has a TON of content. Voice acted quest givers and class quests that run the entire length of your game play experience. Over all, a promising future for TOR.

Hope this helps.

Kaernak

I've mentioned in another thread that I've been beta testing ToR since this time last year and the game has made significant strides in not only keeping their software/graphics/etc up to date but they've also listened to their testers and fan base.  The website has recently posted a video of what is coming up and I have to say I haven't been disappointed in the least and I've recently reached max level.  If anyone is on the fence about ToR I say saber up and get in there!